The Henry Williamson Society

We recognise that e-books are becoming increasingly common, with the advent not just of Kindles and other e-book readers, but iPads and other tablets and smartphones.

E-books also offer an ideal way for us to reissue our out-of-print books, and indeed as a format for new titles.

We have now completed the conversion of our entire publication list (twenty books) to e-books, and have issued a new title, Following in Henry Williamson's Footsteps, as an e-book only. We have additionally republished as e-books Richard Williamson's first two books, both long out-of-print: his memoir The Dawn is My Brother and the novel Capreol: The Story of a Roebuck. Richard has been the President of the Henry Williamson Society since its formation in 1980.

Our e-books are offered in two different file formats: as mobi files (which are Kindle compatible), and EPUB files (compatible with most, if not all, other e-book readers). Please specify which file you require when ordering, using the 'special requests' field.

We are investigating autodownloading of these files, but in the meantime, once an order is placed the appropriate file will be emailed to you for you to download on to your device.

If you have any queries, please direct them to the Online Bookshop here.

E-books

This is a collection of over 80 of Henry Williamson's weekly pieces in the Evening Standard, written during 1944/45. The wartime articles are concerned with everyday happenings on his Norfolk farm, his young children (especially Robbie and Rikky, contributors of the Forewords), with other reflections on country life, and most poignantly, the sale of the farm and the end of his farming dream.

This is a newly illustrated edition of a much-loved classic of country and angling literature. Set in the first half of the 1930s, it tells of the time when the Williamson family lived at Shallowford in Devon. A two-mile stretch of fishing came with the cottage, on the River Bray, which runs through the deer park close by, and the book tells the story of Williamson's relationship with the river.

Henry Williamson's occasional contributions to the prestigious American literary magazine Atlantic Monthly are collected here for the first time: nature sketches, short stories and tales of his later experiences when farming in North Norfolk during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Central to the collection is 'Salar the Salmon', a condensed version of Williamson's best-selling 1935 novel.

Richard Williamson's novel Capreol, first published in 1973, is the story of a young buck deer growing up in the chalk hills and ash woods of the South Downs. It traces the drama of Capreol’s birth, life and violent death; his early explorations of the forest; the fears that haunt him; the fever of the rut; his encounters with a rival, One-Switch; and the constant shadowy presence of two men, one who ruthlessly engineers the world of nature, the other who watches and remains in tune with his surroundings.

Forty-five articles written for the Daily Express between 1937 and 1939 covering HW's last months at Shallowford in Devon, the move to Norfolk, the difficulties first encountered by a total beginner to farming, the disastrous crash in the price of barley in 1938, and the opening months of the Second World War.

A collection of the articles that appeared in the Daily Express between 1966 and 1971 on subjects ranging from the battles of the Somme and Vimy Ridge to the wreck of the Torrey Canyon in March 1967 and conservation issues.

Following Henry Williamson’s Footsteps is an explanatory commentary by Anne Williamson on Williamson's On Foot in Devon, his quirky mock travel guide published in 1933. A detailed knowledge or prior reading of On Foot in Devon is not a prerequisite, for the numerous and sometimes lengthy quotations mean that the commentary can be read and enjoyed independently of the book itself.

This is a collection of 58 essays written between 1958 and 1964, and published in the Co-operative Society’s Home Magazine and, in its Out of Doors series, the Sunday Times. These short essays – personal musings on life, his children, North Devon (now known as ‘Tarka Country’) and other subjects – show HW’s descriptive powers at their best. Nowhere is this shown better than in ‘The Last Summer’, a longer piece that is an evocative personal re-creation of the last golden summer of 1914 before the outbreak of the First World War.

Long out of print, this is a memoir by Henry Williamson recounting his friendship with T. E. Lawrence – ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. It was a friendship through correspondence, for the two men actually met only twice. The memoir quotes extensively from Lawrence’s letters to Williamson, which are both literary and personal in content, and make for fascinating reading. They continue up to Lawrence’s death in 1935.

Between 1937 and 1945 Henry Williamson farmed 243 acres of difficult land in North Norfolk, bringing a near-derelict farm to an A grade classification during the years of the Second World War. Throughout those years he was writing newspaper articles, to help finance the farm, and this book is a collection of the articles that he contributed to the Eastern Daily Press between 1941 and 1944.

Written originally as a way of paying off unexpectedly high bills during his early years of farming in Norfolk, these beautifully written articles by Henry Williamson, set in both Norfolk and Devon, are counterpointed and given immediacy by the inclusion of the evening’s headlines after each article, depicting the deteriorating international situation as the Second World War begins.

This short anthology serves as an introduction to Henry Williamson’s early writings about North Devon, which established his reputation as perhaps the foremost British nature writer of the twentieth century. There are extracts from Williamson’s classic novels Tarka the Otter and Salar the Salmon, as well as from less well-known works, illustrated by contemporary photographs.

A selection of works from a number of scarce sources, including book introductions and contributions to anthologies and magazines; a series of articles in the Evening Standard; and significant essays on Richard Jefferies and Francis Thompson.

The very earliest published writings of HW, which appeared in the Weekly Dispatch between July 1920 and January 1921, during his short-lived Fleet Street career, and which include ‘The Country Week’ (short nature sketches) and ‘On the Road’ (a weekly column on the light cars of the period that offered occasionally somewhat dubious advice!).

A further collection of 21 broadcast talks on the BBC, made between 1936 and 1967. Ten of these were broadcast in the BBC’s Empire Service in 1938/39 and concern the countryside and farming. Four talks are about Williamson’s ongoing struggle to bring life back to the derelict farm in Norfolk that he had bought in 1937, while a later broadcast has the intriguing title ‘On Seeing Marilyn Monroe'.

Recreating a Lost World explores the real Folkestone of 1919-20 and its personalities, identifying the real-life models for fictional characters in The Dream of Fair Women and showing how Henry Williamson translated place and people, and his own experiences, into this and other novels. It is illustrated with eleven unique photographs from the Henry Williamson Literary Estate’s archive and other illustrations.

During the late 1930s Henry Williamson became a broadcaster of some repute on the BBC. This is a collection of twenty-two of his talks, broadcast on the wireless between December 1935 (his very first appearance in front of the microphone) and 1954. Subjects include reminiscences from his own inimitable viewpoint of the West Country and its flora and fauna; the significance in his life of the barn owl; four talks on the lives of English animals (otter, badger, stoat and red deer); and the difficulties encountered on becoming a farmer in Norfolk.

A collection of nature essays and sketches of village life in Georgeham, N Devon, in the 1920s, together with powerful pieces on the First World War. Included also are some of Williamson's classic short stories, including ‘Stumberleap’, the mysterious 'Whatever Has Happened' and 'The Heller'. Illustrated with contemporary photographs.

The Dawn is My Brother, Richard Williamson's first book, was published in 1959, and was runner-up for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It is a book of uncommon quality. Intensely personal and honest, brilliantly alight with the unaffected candour of its author’s personality – and his inborn literary skill – it is an infectiously cheerful autobiography, brimming with enthusiasm for the countryside and the open air, for the world of trees, plants and animals, for rivers, sea and sky.

An anthology originally written as a regular column for the Sunday Referee that reflects Henry Williamson’s unique ability to communicate his passion for the English countryside, whether it be observing salmon leaping in the River Bray, watching partridges in his field and a spider in its web, walking on Dartmoor and Exmoor, or tales of his young children exploring the natural world.